The Bitcoin Foundation finances the core development team. Without them financing it the core team will lose prominent developers. Development has a cost.

There will always be people willing to do it for free. I think bitcoin should continue to be as open and free as possible and we certainly shouldn't be relying on Foundation-funded devs. This is where personal interests can cloud peoples judgement and can lead bitcoin down the wrong path.

Those who are against the foundation shall realize, the sooner the better, that bitcoin, as it is, is doomed because it cannot grow. It doesn't scale well. It's very easy to kill bitcoin: you would just need to increase ten-fold the number of transactions. One solution against this is to increase the block size, but that raises other issues, so there's a need for qualified people (not me) to make the right decisions, and modify the code. Who else could do it, if not the foundation?

Those who are against the foundation shall realize, the sooner the better, that bitcoin, as it is, is doomed because it cannot grow. It doesn't scale well. It's very easy to kill bitcoin: you would just need to increase ten-fold the number of transactions. One solution against this is to increase the block size, but that raises other issues, so there's a need for qualified people (not me) to make the right decisions, and modify the code. Who else could do it, if not the foundation?

Those who are against the foundation shall realize, the sooner the better, that bitcoin, as it is, is doomed because it cannot grow. It doesn't scale well. It's very easy to kill bitcoin: you would just need to increase ten-fold the number of transactions. One solution against this is to increase the block size, but that raises other issues, so there's a need for qualified people (not me) to make the right decisions, and modify the code. Who else could do it, if not the foundation?

this is why we need the +1 option on this forum , or like buttol instead, because u took words out of my mouth. I agree with the rest that it seams a bit off to have a main core devs in one place, but it is so with good reason. Bitcoin would fast fall apart if this wasnt the case, and and problem we may have with it would not get fixed as fast as it can be addressed now.

They should come up with a decentralized voting system and have people around the world freely vote on how they want bitcoin to be.

We have that already. It's called mining.

How does mining address particular questions such as "do we want a fork or not?"

A couple of years ago, the network forked quite literally by accident when approximately half of the network was running one version of the core client while the other half was running another. The fork was detected, and within a matter of only a couple hours, the community rallied together to fix the issue. Miners using the "bad" version switched over to the "good" one. Technically, pool operators were largely responsible for the fix as some pools had been running the "bad" version and quickly switched to the "good" one. But individual miners could have opted to switch pools (or mine solo) if they didn't agree with the decision.

To directly answer your question, any coder can alter the software to come up with a new version of the core client. After that, it simply depends on whether enough miners prefer the new version. If a majority of the network switches to the new version, the network will fork.

We (all bitcoin users) should register the brand "bitcoin" as a DAC. In votings we can then choose to prohibit the use of the name bitcoin for some companys or organisations. That the Bitcoin-foundation is named in that way is irritating me, because they don't represent Bitcoin. The community does!

They should come up with a decentralized voting system and have people around the world freely vote on how they want bitcoin to be.

We have that already. It's called mining.

I sure like the idea. Miners decide. You answered quite correctly about the fork question, but there are other issues. Shall we increase block size? By how much?

Another issue is that miners are no longer individuals on their home computers. They're now Chinese businessmen owning large web farms. Are they friendlier or any better than BTC foundation members?

I think that is alot of everyone's problem right now. The giant farms have taken away ALOT of individual mining positionsthat were once held by people who had faith in Bitcoin. These people could have made the network stronger. Now its a fewBUISNESS men making the decision for thousands of people that have their hands tied.

They should come up with a decentralized voting system and have people around the world freely vote on how they want bitcoin to be.

We have that already. It's called mining.

I sure like the idea. Miners decide. You answered quite correctly about the fork question, but there are other issues. Shall we increase block size? By how much?

Another issue is that miners are no longer individuals on their home computers. They're now Chinese businessmen owning large web farms. Are they friendlier or any better than BTC foundation members?

I think that is alot of everyone's problem right now. The giant farms have taken away ALOT of individual mining positionsthat were once held by people who had faith in Bitcoin. These people could have made the network stronger. Now its a fewBUISNESS men making the decision for thousands of people that have their hands tied.

Bitcoin Foundation is riddled with shady players; I'm not ready to give up on them yet, but I honestly am not sure how they will be able to regain their reputation back. At that, I'm not sure what purpose they are trying to serve anymore. Seems more self gratuitous than anything at this point.